Teaisme asks, "Have you ever not raved about a tea item in fear that others would buy it all up? I get the feeling there are a lot of 'tea secrets' around here. And fess up and come clean! What was the tea?"

Like SilentChaos, I tend to post about teas I love as well. While it saddens me that people would hoard all the good stuff for themselves, one realises that it's an action that is beyond her control. I don't have much to share, but I do feel I give back to the community some when I post an honest review: good or bad.

I have not posted about Ebay purchases until the bidding is over, but otherwise, no tea secrets.

I figure anything I post a good review about might help the source of that tea stay in business, and keep finding more of that or other wonderful things for me. So it's a win-win to share the information.

Today, enjoying the last of the Haru Bancha, the grassiest green tea ever--definitely something I'll be getting more of with the next order. And if enough of you buy out Yuuki-cha's stock of that one right now, there'll be more next year.

...I was only kidding about the secrets by the way I like to share tea as well and I'm pretty sure I've always said how much I liked a tea that I've tried. If you're afraid people are going to empty the vendor's stock, you can always make a preemptive strike and purchase an adequate supply for yourself before talking about that tea.

With teaware, I think it's perfectly fine not to share until you've actually bought it. At the same time, if somebody said they were strongly thinking about buying a piece, but haven't yet, it wouldn't feel right to me to snatch it away. Not that it would be easy to resist if I really loved the piece, though.

It's not quite straight forward, as to how I should answer this question. That is why it took me so long to reply. I had to go with quite often, but I would like to add a comment to that. Its quite often that I see something that's a single item that is available, that if I like it I may not share it until I decide if I want to place an order on it or not.

But usually once I placed an order, or decided I will not be purchasing, I have no problem sharing with others. I will also say that I rarely find a piece or item from places that quite a few TeaChat'ers do not already know about. Though a few people go to extremes I am still not willing to go but may be starting to consider, such as resorting to certain Asian auction sites and going through agents to actually bid on those sites.

I don't think my knowledge of vendors is large enough to have found what might be considered a "good secret". I love reading about tea, and that's about all the enjoyment I can get at times since I have no nearby tea pals and a very limited tea budget. If I ever do find something worth keeping secret I will be sure to share it with all of TeaChat and my blog readers (all three of them!). I'm terrible with secrets.

No tea yet today, but thinking of some Rou Gui and then a review session for the Long Jing I got from Tea Spring a few weeks ago.